Abandons Quotes & Sayings

In reality the monk abandons the world only in order to listen more intently to the deepest and most neglected voices that proceed from its inner depth. — Thomas Merton

Everything rational and sensible abandons me when I try to throw out photographs. Time and time again, I hold one over a wastebasket, and then find it impossible to release my fingers and let the picture drop and disappear. — Susan Orlean

Many a man, brought up in the glib profession of some shallow form of Christianity, who comes through reading Astronomy to realize for the first time how majestically indifferent most reality is to man, and who perhaps abandons his religion on that account, may at that moment be having his first genuinely religious experience. — C.S. Lewis

There is no absolute peril except for him who abandons himself; There is no complete death except for him who aquires a taste of dying. — Jacques Riviere

There comes a turning point in intense physical struggle where one abandons oneself to a profligate usage of strength and bodily resource, ignoring the costs until the struggle is over. Women find this point in childbirth; men in battle. — Diana Gabaldon

God," she said, her tone gently reproving, "brought Mr.Kensington to you, and with him, a world of potential. As I see it, each of our lives is a journey, Miss Cora. A path that takes us over the mountain or down through a dark valley. But He never abandons us. Never. That is how He cares for us - walking with us every step of the way. — Lisa Tawn Bergren

Immeasurable voids and endless questions are often created when a father deliberately abandons his child. Far too often, those empty spaces are filled by opportunists who see that vulnerability as something to exploit. — Steve Pemberton

The overwhelming public sentiment in India was that no meaningful dialogue can be held with Pakistan until it abandons the use of terrorism as an instrument of its foreign policy. — Atal Bihari Vajpayee

We are in a war of a peculiar nature. It is not with an ordinary community, which is hostile or friendly as passion or as interest may veer about: not with a state which makes war through wantonness, and abandons it through lassitude. We are at war with a system, which by its essence, is inimical to all other governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by its essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country. — Edmund Burke

This specter of the female politician, who abandons her family to neglect for the sake of passing bills in parliament, is just as complete an illusion of the masculine brain, as the other specter whom Sydney Smith laid by a joke,
the woman who would forsake an infant for a quadratic equation. — Frances Power Cobbe

For me, a woman who is absorbed in her work, who does not care about gaining one's favour, strong yet subtle at the same time, is essentially more seductive. The more she hides and abandons her femininity, the more it emerges from the very heart of her existence. — Yohji Yamamoto

You don't convince people by challenging their longest and most firmly held opinions. You find common ground and work from there. Or you look for leverage to make them listen. Or you create an alterative with so much support from other people that the opposition voluntarily abandons its views and joins your camp. — Ryan Holiday

How are we supposed to live in the future when the future just abandons us to the night? — Warren Ellis

What common people call beauty is essentially nature. The moment nature abandons you, your beauty is lost forever. — Anuradha Bhattacharyya

When every piece of furniture and your underwear are taken by the bank, when you lose your house in Florida, in New York, in Amsterdam and L.A., when your wife is dying and your son abandons you, you don't feel very good. — Al Goldstein

To the extent America abandons Israel, it abandons itself. — Yaron Brook

But one gets tired of everything, even of abusing a person. Paris abandons its puppets which it raises to the throne as quickly as it does its martyrs whom it hoists on the gibbet; in its perpetual hunger for new playthings, it never gets itself excited overly much before the statues of its heroes or at the sight of the blood of its victims. — Octave Mirbeau

A society which abandons children and the elderly severs its roots and darkens its future. — Pope Francis

In the United States, if a political character attacks a sect, this may not prevent even the partisans of that very sect, from supporting him; but if he attacks all the sects together, every one abandons him and he remains alone. — Alexis De Tocqueville

You can make peace with an enemy, if the enemy abandons the idea of destroying you. That is the critical test. Democracies fail to understand that. — Benjamin Netanyahu

To grant life more importance than it has is the mistake committed in sagging systems; as a consequence, no one is ready to sacrifice himself to defend them, and they collapse under the first blows perpetrated upon them. This is even more true of nations in general. Once they begin to hold life sacred, it abandons them, it ceases to be on their side. — Emil Cioran

The soul languishing in obscurity contracts a kind of rust, or abandons itself to the chimera of presumption; for it is natural for it to acquire something, even when separated from any one. — Quintilian

For, like desire, regret seeks not to be analysed but to be satisfied. When one begins to love, one spends one's time, not in getting to know what one's love really is, but in making it possible to meet next day. When one abandons love one seeks not to know one's grief but to offer to her who is causing it that expression of it which seems to one the most moving. One says the things which one feels the need of saying, and which the other will not understand, one speaks for oneself alone. I wrote: 'I had thought that it would not be possible. Alas, I see now that it is not so difficult.' I said also: 'I shall probably not see you again;' I said it while I continued to avoid shewing a coldness which she might think affected, and the words, as I wrote them, made me weep because I felt that they expressed not what I should have liked to believe but what was probably going to happen. — Marcel Proust

If Christ Jesus dwells in a man as his friend and noble leader, that man can endure all things, for Christ helps and strengthens us and never abandons us. He is a true friend. — Saint Teresa Of Avila

Can a civilization hold together if man abandons his faith in God? — Will Durant

A mistake is the name we give to any action in which we perceive a difference between what we intended and what has occurred. Intention fuels every dramatic action, including the writing of dramatic stories, which involves a series of dramatic actions. In the course of writing, or finding, the story that wants to get itself told, it behooves the writer to liberate the characters by finding the faith and courage necessary for setting aside one's own conscious needs and expectations. Not to do so promotes 'mistakes' - i.e: confusion born of some incoherence in the emotional logic of the story). As the writer abandons his/her intentions - no matter how noble they may seem - only then does that most strange and ineffable quality we so casually refer to as 'the magic' have a chance of entering the story, and rendering even the 'mistakes' stimulating, daring and provocative. — Billy Marshall Stoneking

Hope never abandons you, you abandon it. — George Weinberg

He might dance down the street on his way to work, gaze into the eyes of a complete stranger and speak of love at first sight, or defend an apparently absurd idea. Warriors of light allow themselves days like these.
He is not afraid to weep over ancient sorrows or feel joy at new discoveries. When he feels that the moment has arrived, he drops everything and goes off on some long-dreamed-of adventure. When he realises that he can do no more, he abandons the fight, but never blames himself for having committed a few unexpected acts of folly.
A warrior does not spend his days trying to play the role that others have chosen for him. — Paulo Coelho

On the earth, even in the darkest night, the light never wholly abandons his rule. It is diffused and subtle, but little as may remain, the retina of the eye is sensible of it. — Jules Verne

Most executives have learned that what one postpones, one actually abandons ... timing is a most important element in the success of any effort. To do five years later what would have been smart to do five years earlier, is almost a sure recipe for frustration and failure. — Peter Drucker

It is useless to subdue the flesh by abstinence, unless one gives up his irregular life, and abandons vices which defile his soul. — Benedict Of Nursia

I think the only choice that will enable us to hold to our vision ... is one that abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition: naming behavior that is oppressive. — Barbara Deming

The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distress. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public. This is a natural consequence of what has been said before. Between the workman and the master there are frequent relations, but no real association.
I am of the opinion, on the whole, that the manufacturing aristocracy which is growing up under our eyes is one of the harshest that ever existed in the world; but at the same time it is one of the most confined and least dangerous. Nevertheless, the friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed in this direction; for if ever a permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy again penetrates into the world, it may be predicted that this is the gate by which they will enter. — Alexis De Tocqueville

When a society abandons its ideals just because most people can't live up to them, behavior gets very ugly indeed. — Judith Martin

Robert Bork, at opening of Judiciary hearings:
How should a judge go about finding the law? The only legitimate way, in my opinion, is by attempting to discern what those who made the law intended ...
As I wrote in an opinion for our court, the judge's responsibility is to discern how the framers' values, defined in the context of the world they knew, apply in the world we know.
If a judge abandons intentions as his guide, there is no law available to him, and he begins to legislate a social agenda for the American people. That goes well beyond his powers.. — Joe Biden

Fortune helps the intrepid and abandons the cowards. I am the daughter of a man who did not know of fear. Whatever may come, I am resolved to follow that course until death. — Caterina Sforza

While I am usually in despair when a movie abandons its plot for a third act given over entirely to action, I have no problem with the way Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets ends, because it has been pointing toward this ending, hinting about it, preparing us for it, all the way through. What a glorious movie. — Roger Ebert

A Lady in Waiting...

Recklessly abandons herself to the Lordship of Christ

Diligently uses her single days

Trusts God with unwavering faith

Demonstrates virtue in daily life

Loves God with undistracted devotion

Stands for physical and emotional purity

Lives in security

Responds to life in contentment

Makes choices based on her convictions

Waits patiently for God to meet her needs — Jackie Kendall

Nothing can be more cruel than that leniency which abandons others to their sin. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We are born with a seed of selfhood that contains the spiritual DNA of our uniqueness-an encoded birthright knowledge of who we are, why we are here, and how we are related to others. We may abandon that knowledge as the years go by, but it never abandons us. — Parker J. Palmer

The main difference seems to be that, whereas photography still claims some sort of objectivity, digital imaging is an overtly fictional process. As a practice that is known to be capable of nothing but fabrication, digitization abandons even the rhetoric of truth that has been such an important part of photography's cultural success. — Geoffrey Batchen

Sandy illustrated the depraved mentality of an oligarchic and corporate elite that, as conditions worsen, retreats into self-contained gated communities, guts basic services, and abandons the wider population. — Chris Hedges

If a hamster has too many babies she knows she cannot carry, she not only abandons them, but she eats them. That means she doesn't have to go out and hunt for food for herself. — Isabella Rossellini

I place no hope in my strength, nor in my works: but all my confidence is in God my protector, who never abandons those who have put all their hope and thought in him. — Francois Rabelais

A true friend is like a soldier that never abandons his partner alone in the battle field". — Abdulazeez Henry Musa

But the fact being once established, that the press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood, I leave to others to restore it to its strength, by recalling it within the pale of truth. Within that, it is a noble institution, equally the friend of science and of civil liberty. — Thomas Jefferson

A feeble mind, conscious of its own feebleness, grows feeble under that very consciousness. As soon as the power of fear becomes known to it, there follows the fear of fear, and, on the first perturbation, reason abandons it. — Hector Berlioz

There are two sure ways to fail: never get started and quit before you succeed. Many companies promote the language of risk-taking and innovation but are so concerned with short term profit goals that their culture discourages innovation (trying new things) and abandons promising projects too soon. It shouldn't require exceptional moral courage to try new things and stick with them. — Michael Josephson

An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it. — Paul Valery

Male domination - where a husband forcefully asserts dominance in physically, emotionally, or spiritually abusive ways and treats his wife harshly without godly love - is a sinful distortion of male headship. A wife becoming slave-like is also a sinful distortion that undermines the value, dignity, beauty, and worth of a wife and warps the picture of what godly femininity is supposed to be. Male passivity is a sinful distortion of biblical masculinity that abandons God-given responsibility and accountability and endangers a man's wife and family. — April Cassidy

Each one of a pair of lovers fashions himself to meet the other's requirements - endeavors by a continual effort to resemble that idol of himself which he beholds in the other's heart ... Whoever really loves abandons all sincerity. — Andre Gide

God abandons only those who abandon themselves, and whoever has the courage to shut up his sorrow within his own heart is stronger to fight against it than he who complains. — George Sand

It is the universal nature of human Bildung to constitute itself as a universal intellectual being. Whoever abandons himself to his particularity is ungebildet ("unformed") - e.g., if someone gives way to blind anger without measure or sense of proportion. Hegel shows that basically such a man is lacking in the power of abstraction. He cannot turn his gaze from himself towards something universal, from which his own particular being is determined in measure and proportion. — Hans-Georg Gadamer

Heaven is eternal, earth everlasting. they endure this way because they do not live for themselves. in the same way, the wise person puts himself last, and thereby finds himself first, holds himself outside, and thereby remains at the center, abandons himself, and is thereby fulfilled. — Laozi

The Founding Fathers and our fathers are rolling over in their graves as this great country voluntarily abandons its dreams of equal opportunity, achievement and prosperity and sows the seeds of its own destruction. — David Limbaugh

The moment one abandons the idea that he was born to discover what is right and enforce it upon the rest of the world, he begins to feel an increasing disposition to let others alone and to refrain even from retaliation or resistance except in those emergencies which immediately and imperatively require it. — Benjamin Tucker

America will nurture a new Muslim - one who can believe in Muhammad and the Quran but who abandons belief in a Shariah-based state and affirms the primary American value of individual liberty, which has not been a normative Islamic value. — Dennis Prager

I should go so far as to say that embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anticommunication, featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics, I believe the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in philosophy, nihilism; in psychiatry, schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater, it is known as vaudeville. — Neil Postman

In times of hardship and pain, we may feel abandoned by our friends, by our families, and by our Creator. But if we believe that God has left us, even for a moment, we are mistaken. God never abandons us, not even when the raindrops are falling in buckets. Through every storm of life, He is ever-present, offering us His grace, His love, and His mercies. — Laura Story

The measure of the wealth of a nation is indicated by the measure of its protection of its industry; the measure of the poverty of a nation is marked by the degree in which it neglects and abandons the care of its own industry, leaving it exposed to the action of foreign powers. — Henry Clay

You see, dervish, it wasn't always like this. Violence wasn't my element, but it is now. When God forgets about us down here, it falls upon us common people to toughen up and restore justice. So next time you talk to him, you tell him that let him know that when he abandons his lambs, they won't meekly wait to be slaughtered. They will turn into wolves. — Elif Shafak

The "thesis neurosis" has begun: the student abandons the thesis, returns to it, feels unfulfilled, loses focus, and uses his thesis as an alibi to avoid other challenges in his life that he is too cowardly to address. This student will never graduate. — Umberto Eco

So one always starts a journey in a strange land
taking too many precautions, until one tires of the exertion and abandons care in the worst spot of all. — Graham Greene

When the will abandons what is above itself and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil - not because that is evil to which it turns, but because the turning itself is wicked. Therefore it is not an inferior thing which has made the will evil, but it is itself which has become so by wickedly and inordinately desiring an inferior thing. — Augustine Of Hippo

Yet the way men live is so far removed from the way they ought to live that anyone who abandons what 'is' for what 'should be' pursues his downfall rather than his preservation; — David Mitchell

For it is through joy that the Individualism of the future will develop itself. Christ made no attempt to reconstruct society, and consequently the Individualism that he preached to man could be realised only through pain or in solitude. The ideals that we owe to Christ are the ideals of the man who abandons society entirely, or of the man who resists society absolutely. But man is naturally social. — Oscar Wilde

God has not abandoned us any more than he abandoned Job. He never abandons anyone on whom he has set his love; nor does Christ, the good shepherd, ever lose track of his sheep. — J.I. Packer

Often it is brought home to my mind
the dark quality that Love gives me,
and pity moves me, so that frequently
I say: 'Alas! is anyone so afflicted?':
since Amor assails me suddenly,
so that life almost abandons me:
only a single spirit stays with me,
and that remains because it speaks of you.
I renew my strength, because I wish for help,
and pale like this, all my courage drained,
come to you, believing it will save me:
and if I lift my eyes to gaze at you
my heart begins to tremble so,
that from my pulse the soul departs. — Dante Alighieri

Know that the science of unveiling has no end to it, for it consists in the journey of the intellect in the stations of Majesty, Beauty, Sublimeness, Grandeur, and Holiness ... He to whom the mysteries of La ilaha illa'llah are revealed draws near to God, and his worship of God becomes sincere. He does not turn to anyone but to Him, nor does he have hope in or fear other than Him, nor does he see harm or benefit except as coming from Him. He abandons whosoever is not He and rids himself of inward and outward associationism (shirk). — Ibn Ata Allah

Apostasy occurs when a church leaves its historic moorings, abandons its historic confessional position, and degenerates into a state where either essential Christian truths are blatantly denied or the denial of such truths is widely tolerated. — R.C. Sproul

I usually start writing a novel that I then abandon. When I say abandon, I don't think any writer ever abandons anything that they regard as even a half-good sentence. So you recycle. I mean, I can hang on to a sentence for several years and then put it into a book that's completely different from the one it started in. — Kate Atkinson

Mozart's mental grip never loosens; he never abandons himself to any one sense; even at his most ecstatic moments his mind is vigorous, alert, and on the wing. He dives unerringly on to his finest ideas like a bird of prey, and once an idea is seized he soars off again with an undiminished power. — Walter J. Turner

The beautiful are never desolate; But some one alway loves them
God or man. If man abandons, God himself takes them. — Philip James Bailey

I felt a familiar squeezing in what I thought must be my heart. I had heard of being "heartbroken" or "heavy-hearted" but I had never known it was an actual sensation one felt when the whole world abandons you. — Robin Hobb

When I discussed the nature of value, I observed that value is nothing inherent in goods and that it is not a property of goods. But neither is value an independent thing. There is no reason why a good may not have value to one economizing individual but no value to another individual under different circumstances. The measure of value is entirely subjective in nature, and for this reason a good can have great value to one economizing individual, little value to another, and no value at all to a third, depending upon the differences in their requirements and available amounts. What one person disdains or values lightly is appreciated by another, and what one person abandons is often picked up by another. — Carl Menger

I do think you have to change with the times in a way that renews your core essence, not abandons it. To change for the sake of change - without an anchor - that is mere faddishness. It will only lead you further astray. — Richard C. Morais

Far from rejecting such a good man as you, He never even abandons a wicked man who hopes for His mercy. — Vincent De Paul

Pride is the beginning of sin. And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation - when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself. — Augustine Of Hippo

The Christian religion alone contemplates the conjugal union in the order of nature; it is the only religion which presents woman to man as a companion; every other abandons her to him as a slave. To religion alone do European women owe their liberty. — Jacques-Henri Bernardin De Saint-Pierre

When a book goes well, it abandons me. I am the most abandoned writer in the world. — Jim Crace

Like a certain philosopher I would, upon my soul, have all young men from eighteen to twenty-five kept under barrels; seeing how often, in the lack of some such sequestering process, the woman sits down before each as his destiny, and too frequently enervates his purpose, till he abandons the most promising course ever conceived! — Thomas Hardy

If you saw a dog that was hit by a car in the street, lying there, hurt, in pain, broken ... would you pick it up? Caress it? Reassure it? Then just throw it back in the street? Some people do that, just in different ways ... to other people.
Whis is worse? The one who causes the intial pain and suffering without stopping or the one who intentionally gives false hope, then injures more, and then just abandons? — Jose N. Harris

The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood. — Thomas Jefferson

But the passenger, having named the place he wants to go and knowing himself as helpless to act on the course of events as the dark box that encloses him, abandons himself to the pleasant feeling of being freed from all responsibility, or he ponders on what lies before him, or on what lies behind him, saying, Twill not be ever thus, and then in the same breath, But twas ever thus, for there are not five hundred different kinds of passengers. And so they hasten, the horse, the driver, and the passenger, towards the appointed place, by the shortest route or deviously, through the press of other misplaced persons. — Samuel Beckett

A Church which abandons the truth abandons itself. — Hans Kung

A true patriot never abandons his country at the hour of need. — Auliq Ice

For no sin is committed save by that desire or will by which we desire that it be well with us, and shrink from it being ill with us. That, therefore, is a lie which we do in order that it may be well with us, but which makes us more miserable than we were. And why is this, but because the source of man's happiness lies only in God, whom he abandons when he sins, and not in himself, by living according to whom he sins? — Augustine Of Hippo

While I fear that we're drawn to what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I believe we're defined by what embraces us. — J.R. Moehringer

I hope the day will never come when the church abandons the "class meeting" and the prayer service ... The old-fashioned "testimony" meeting should be revived, for through this medium we can share with others our faith and triumphs as well as our needs and mistakes. — Billy Graham

Human-heartedness is man's mind. Righteousness is man's path. How sad that he abandons that path and does not rely on it; that he loses that mind and does not know to seek it. When a man has lost a cock or a dog, he knows to seek it, but having lost his (proper) mind, he does not know to seek it. The Way of Learning is nothing other than seeking the lost mind — Mencius

The foetus is the property of the entire society.Anyone having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity. — Nicolae Ceausescu

Society takes upon itself the right to inflict
appalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of
shallowness, and fails to realise what it has done. When the man's punishment
is over, it leaves him to himself; that is to say, it abandons him at the
very moment when its highest duty towards him begins. It is really ashamed
of its own actions, and shuns those whom it has punished, as people shun a
creditor whose debt they cannot pay, or one on whom they have inflicted
an irreparable, an irremediable wrong. — Oscar Wilde

The highest duty of the man is not to his father, but to his wife; and for the sake of that woman he abandons all other earthly ties, should any of these happen to interfere with that relation. — Lafcadio Hearn

Four characteristics constitute anyone who possesses them a sheer hypocrite, and anyone who possesses one of them possesses a characteristic of hypocrisy till he abandons it: when he is trusted he betrays his trust, when he talks he lies, when he makes a covenant he acts treacherously and when he quarrels he abuses. — Elijah Muhammad

Always know in your heart that God is by your side; he never abandons you! Let us never lose hope! Let us never allow it to die in our hearts! — Pope Francis

I would never even consider leaving you. No matter who else abandons me...or looks down on me...or spits in my face...I will stay with you to the end. — Hotaru Odagiri

Today's Communism can survive only if it abandons the myth of an infallible party, if it continues to think, and if it becomes democratic. — Friedrich Durrenmatt

Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,- who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government. — Thomas Pynchon

As the cream abandons the milk from which it took its life, and rises to the top and rides there, so men, because they are richer than those around about them, separate themselves, and all mankind below them they regard as skim milk. — Henry Ward Beecher

My latex-covered fingers tighten as the warmth abandons them. Mom swears she stored a bag of rice in the underground bunker, but I can't find anything resembling food. A shiver runs down my spine while I move empty crates around. Some light would really help. — Anya Monroe